’If you ask me, I must ask myself’—­that is, when I am to see you—­I will never ask you!  You do not know what I shall estimate that permission at,—­nor do I, quite—­but you do—­do not you? know so much of me as to make my ‘asking’ worse than a form—­I do not ‘ask’ you to write to me—­not directly ask, at least.

I will tell you—­I ask you not to see me so long as you are unwell, or mistrustful of—­

No, no, that is being too grand!  Do see me when you can, and let me not be only writing myself

Yours

R.B.

A kind, so kind, note from Mr. Kenyon came.  We, I and my sister, are to go in June instead....  I shall go nowhere till then; I am nearly well—­all save one little wheel in my head that keeps on its

[Illustration:  Music:  bass clef, B-flat, Sostenuto]

That you are better I am most thankful.

‘Next letter’ to say how you must help me with all my new Romances and Lyrics, and Lays and Plays, and read them and heed them and end them and mend them!

E.B.B. to R.B.

Thursday.
[Post-mark, May 16, 1845.]

But how ‘mistrustfulness’?  And how ‘that way?’ What have I said or done, I, who am not apt to be mistrustful of anybody and should be a miraculous monster if I began with you!  What can I have said, I say to myself again and again.

One thing, at any rate, I have done, ‘that way’ or this way!  I have made what is vulgarly called a ‘piece of work’ about little; or seemed to make it.  Forgive me.  I am shy by nature:—­and by position and experience, ... by having had my nerves shaken to excess, and by leading a life of such seclusion, ... by these things together and by others besides, I have appeared shy and ungrateful to you.  Only not mistrustful.  You could not mean to judge me so.  Mistrustful people do not write as I write, surely! for wasn’t it a Richelieu or Mazarin (or who?) who said that with five lines from anyone’s hand, he could take off his head for a corollary?  I think so.

Well!—­but this is to prove that I am not mistrustful, and to say, that if you care to come to see me you can come; and that it is my gain (as I feel it to be) and not yours, whenever you do come.  You will not talk of having come afterwards I know, because although I am ‘fast bound’ to see one or two persons this summer (besides yourself, whom I receive of choice and willingly) I cannot admit visitors in a general way—­and putting the question of health quite aside, it would be unbecoming to lie here on the sofa and make a company-show of an infirmity, and hold a beggar’s hat for sympathy.  I should blame it in another woman—­and the sense of it has had its weight with me sometimes.